Juvenile Court Sketches: Iii. The Forger

IT was spring, one of those gusty March days whose blasts, reminiscent of winter, arc succeeded by a mood so soft and wooing that the senses ache with the swift prescience of growing things. It was the sort of day that sends young lambs on shaky legs cavorting over the meadows, and lures young boys out of their white beds, to sleep in the open fields or any chicken-coop or ash-barrel. Such a boy now walked along the street peddling hand-bills.

He was fourteen, and since his mother died the year before, he had supported himself. Since, to do this, he must elude the truant officers, he had become crafty. And since he had twice been caught by them, and had gone without eating for two days before he discovered that he could quite easily run away from school and lose himself in the city, he had also become bitter. But. he was neither crafty nor bitter as he walked along, sniffing the spring, and shivering when the bitterer gusts smote his small person.

So, with his eyes upon nothing at all, but alert as a young fox’s, he perceived in the gutter a stamped envelope, saw that it was addressed, and picked it up. Without examining it, he thrust it quickly into his pocket, and then, with our ancient instinct for an alibi, he began whistling jauntily, peddling his bills, meanwhile, with an almost ferocious exactness. Two blocks away he halted before an alley and looked quickly up and down: then scurried along it and

dodged into a doorway. Jerking the envelope from his pocket he tore it open. A check for seventy-five dollars, drawn to Peter Googan, confronted him.

The boy knew perfectly well what he had found. The year before, in school, he had himself written dozens of checks, all the way from twenty-five cents to a million and a half dollars; and this stupendous capital, enough to float the war, with careless abandon he had passed around to his companions, receiving I.O.U.’s in juvenile penmanship and strictly legal phraseology.

But this check was different. He stared at it. It meant real money — seventy-five real dollars. The gust died down; the thrill of spring swept over him. He snatched off his hat and threw it into a puddle. Then he leaned up against the brick wall, and across the back of the check he wrote ‘Peter Googan.’ He wrote it quickly and neatly.

The need of an accomplice now became immediate and imperative. Another boy came up the alley. He was picking up cigarette stubs, examining them with minute interest, and stuffing part of them into his pocket.

‘Swiggey, come here.’

Swiggey came, with the ready obedience that ten accords to fourteen.

‘Take this to John’s grocery and get it cashed and bring me the money.’

‘Where did you get it?’ asked Swiggey suspiciously.

‘He gave it to me: he owes my father money.’

‘ Why don’t you do it yourself, then? ’

‘I got those bills to peddle. Can’t you see for yourself? Ah, gwan, Swiggey. I ’ll give you a dollar, if you will.'

‘Give me half,’ said Swiggey.

Without a word the young forger doubled up his fist and brought it up swiftly toward Swiggey’s jaw. But Swiggey’s jaw was no longer where it had been. Swiggey ducked under the oncoming fist, gave a couple of leaps, and stood on the opposite side of the alley, poised like Hermes, for immediate flight, if caution dictated.

But Swiggey was in no danger. With a look of scorn that was meant to annihilate him altogether, the young forger folded up the check and put it into his own pocket. Then he picked up his hand-bills and walked leisurely out of the alley, whistling as he went. Swiggey waited until he had turned the corner, then stuffed his last cigarette stub into his blouse and trotted after him.

Once more on the street, the boy again began to distribute the bills, this time, very honorably, one to a doorway. In this way, he worked his way for two blocks, until he stood before a grocery. He lifted up a basket of potatoes; with a sudden quick movement of his foot, he kicked off another basket, threw his handbills into it, and replaced the basket of potatoes. A man passing by smiled at the small cheat, and the boy smiled back, the guileless smile of childhood. Then he went into the store.

There was a crowd inside and no one paid any attention to him. But the Fabian policy had long been his. He inspected the apples, the various kinds of jawbreakers, also the cigarettes, with interest.

Presently a clerk came up to him.

He held out the check. ’I want to pay Peter Googan’s bill.’

The clerk eyed him sharply.

He smiled his frank smile. ‘How much is Peter Googan’s bill?’ he asked. ‘How much did he tell you?’ said the clerk, inspecting the check.

‘He said you’d know,’ said the boy.

The clerk consulted the books, then handed the boy forty dollars.

The boy received the money and turned to confront Swiggey. Swiggey’s face wore a grin, and Swiggey’s hand was out. A boy or a dog always knows his friend. The boy knew that his eyes looked into the eyes of an enemy, and a cunning one.

‘If you snitch, I’ll kill you,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a gun and I’ll kill you dead.’

It was a threat for the waste places, but not for a crowded store. Swiggey’s hand shut tight on the forger’s blouse.

‘Dibs,’ he said.

The other boy twisted his hand loose and brushed past him.

‘He stole it,’ Swiggey shrieked. ‘I seen him put the writing on it: I seen him. Up Mack’s alley, by the poolroom. I seen him do it.’

But the accused was gone. A survey of the street revealed no scurrying boy.

An hour later a policeman walked down to the front row of a movie house and touched a boy on the shoulder. Bill Hart was just leaping the chasm on his sported pinto. The boy did not move. The policeman took hold of his arm and shook him.

He looked up. ‘I ain’t done nothing.’ Then, behind the burly form he saw the grinning face of Swiggey. ‘I ’ll kill you, you dirty little snitcher,’ he said. And the sleepy afternoon audience was given a mild diversion, not noted on the programme, as two small boys and a policeman climbed the aisle.

Outside Swiggey watched the two go up the street toward the courthouse. As they disappeared, from the pocket of his blouse he drew a handfull of stubs, selected the longest, and lit it. And now, he too, become a culprit, became suddenly fugitive and dived into an alley.